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Special Bimonthly FORB Newsletter 
(16-31.08.2021)
 
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Former anti-cult top bureaucrat Peng Bo is in jail


02 September 2021
 
Website: https://hrwf.eu
CHINA
Special Bimonthly FoRB Newsletter (16-31.08.2021)



Uyghur Muslims


30.08.21 - Tibetans, Uyghurs remember those Who ‘Disappeared’ at China’s Hands


The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs (Oxus) have released a new report documenting the complicity of the Pakistani and Afghan states in China’s transnational repression of Uyghurs. 

The report, “Nets Cast from the Earth to the Sky”: China’s Hunt for Pakistan’s Uyghurs, distinguishes different methods by which the Chinese government represses Uyghur communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan and describes how these methods violate international human rights and legal norms. 



Tibetan Buddhists


27.08.21 - Around 50 Tibetans arrested on suspicion of keeping photos of the Dalai Lama

Military search operation in Dza Wonpo Town enforced eight months on from the death in custody of 19-year-old Tenzin Nyima



Protestants

26.08.21 - Police arrest 10 kids, 18 adults in raid on worship gathering

Police in China raided a small group of Christian worshipers from a heavily-persecuted house church in southwestern China’s Sichuan province and arrested almost everyone, including an infant less than 1 year old, nine children and 18 adults.




Falun Gong

31.08.21 - With arm disabled from torture during 12-year imprisonment, Liaoning woman secretly sentenced for her faith again

Over the past 22 years of the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese communist regime, Ms. Liu Xia has been imprisoned for 12 years, during which time one of her arms became disabled from torture in custody. She was arrested again in 2019 and secretly sentenced for her faith.



31.08.21 - Yantai City, Shandong Province: Fifteen Falun Gong practitioners targeted in group arrest detained for nearly three months

The authorities in Laishan District, Yantai City, Shandong Province orchestrated a group arrest of local Falun Gong practitioners on June 10, 2021. At the time of writing, 15 practitioners remain in custody.



25.08.21 - Download Falun Gong books, get five years in jail

Appellate decision against two Shanxi women confirms that under Article 300 possession of printed material of a xie jiao is enough to go to jail.



15.08.21 - Former art teacher sentenced to 6.5 years after installing window for elderly Falun Gong practitioner

Mr. Sun Shiwei, a 68-year-old former art teacher, has been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison following his latest arrest in April 2020 after helping an elderly woman, also a Falun Gong practitioner, install a window.




Other religions


18.08.21 - Seventh-day adventist clergy get heavy jail sentences in Guizhou

Officially, Adventist congregations in China are part of the Three-Self Church. Those who kept their distinctiveness are now persecuted.
CHINA
Former 'anti-cult' top bureaucrat Peng Bo is in jail
As Bitter Winter predicted, expulsion from the CCP has been followed by arrest and prosecution
By Gao Zihao

Bitter Winter (01.09.2021) - https://bit.ly/3Bz764E - Bitter Winter has reported previously about the fall of Peng Bo, former no. 2 of the CCPmachine fighting the banned religious movements labeled as xie jiao (“heterodox teachings,” sometimes less correctly translated as “evil cults”).

When Peng was expelled from the CCP on August 17, with an unusual lengthy note of explanation accusing him of taking bribes and engaging himself in “superstitious activities,” Bitter Winter predicted he would soon go to jail.

It was not a difficult prediction, and Peng was jailed last week. Under the anti-corruption directives of President Xi Jinping, it risks a long jail sentence, if not execution.

The Hong Kong daily South China Morning Post took the opportunity of the fall of Peng Bo to explain to its readers that as a “cult-buster” the bureaucrat was fighting “cults,” i.e., “groups engaging in inhumane, antisocial or unconstitutional practices, which could involve violent crimes, fraud, sexual abuse.”

This is only true if you believe the CCP propaganda. The CCP often accuses groups labeled as xie jiao or their leaders of fraud and sexual abuse, but in many if not most cases the only charge is that their teachings are incompatible with the CCP ideology and generate hostility to the government. It is difficult, for example, to accuse the Shouters, the first group historically labeled a xie jiao, of “fraud or sexual abuse,” and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a peaceful and puritanical group, have also been called a xie jiao in recent years. In the cases of other groups labeled as xie jiao, charges of abuse or violence are largely trumped up.

This is not a problem with the South China Morning Post article only. It was a problem with Peng Bo. Most of the accusations launched against xie jiao were so obviously false that they did not stick. Few took them seriously in China, although they were propagated by some CCP’s “fellow travelers” and hired guns abroad. Most importantly, black propaganda, arrests, and even executions failed to eradicate movements labeled as xie jiao that have been active in China for decades, such as The Church of Almighty God and Falun Gong (whose meditation to boost the immune system made it popular again during the COVID-19 crisis), or to prevent the birth and growth of new “heterodox” religious groups.

Perhaps Peng Bo took bribes or, like many other CCP bureaucrats, engaged in divination or feng shui. But he is in jail mostly because his attempts to eradicate the xie jiao proved remarkably ineffective.

Picture: Jailed: Peng Bo. From Weibo.
Disclaimer: Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) publishes information from a variety of outside sources which express a wide range of viewpoints. The positions taken in these communications are not necessarily those of HRWF.
Willy Fautré is the Editor-in-Chief. 


For readers of our newsletters in the Netherlands, please contact Hans Noot (Hans.Noot.HRWF@gmail.com) member of HRWF board of directors and he will answer you in Dutch.

Other HRWF newsletters: Human Rights in the World | LGBTQI People & Human Rights | Religion & Security | Women's Rights & Gender Equality

Some activities in 2021

Publication in Nova Religio: “Shincheonji and Coronavirus in South Korea: Sorting Fact From Fiction. A White Paper.” By Massimo Introvigne, Willy Fautre ́, Rosita Sˇoryte ́, Alessandro Amicarelli, and Marco Respinti. CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers, 2020. 32 pages, University of California Press (15.08.2021)

HRWF participating in a workshop of a conference online in the US about the persecution of religious minorities through taxation. Topic: Persecution of JW in France and Tai Ji Men in Taiwan (08.08.2021)
 
HRWF co-organizing a webinar with CESNUR about “The UN Int’l Day of Friendship and Tai Ji Men’s Case” (31.07.2021)
 
HRWF director interviewed by EU REPORTER and EU TODAY about Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan (29.07.2021)
 
HRWF director participating in a press conference at the Press Club in Brussels about Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan (27.07.2021)
 
HRWF director and Zsuzsa-Anna Ferenczy publishing an article in EU REPORTER about the arrest of Buddhists in China (23.07.2021)


HRWF co-organizing a webinar with CESNUR about "Parliaments, Freedom of Religion or Belief and Tai Ji Men Case" on International Day of Parliamentarism (30.06.2021)

HHHRWF director participating in a debate about human rights in North Korea after a theatre performance in Brussels (25.06.2021)
 
HRWF publishing an article in The European Times about massacres of Amharas in Ethiopia (21.06.2021)
 
Participation of HRWF director in a press conference about inter-ethnic violence in Ethiopia (16.06.2021)
 
HRWF director participating in a debate about human rights in North Korea after a theatre performance in Brussels (25.06.2021)
 
HRWF publishing an article in The European Times about massacres of Amharas in Ethiopia (21.06.2021)
 
Participation of HRWF director in a press conference about inter-ethnic violence in Ethiopia (16.06.2021)

HRWF co-organizing with One World Human Rights Film Festival a debate on human rights in North Korea (03.06.2021)
 
HRWF co-organizing with the FORB Roundtable EU-Brussels a webinar on the Flemish Decree on religious communities (02.06.2021)

HRWF co-organizing a webinar with CESNUR about the fiscal persecution of Tai Ji Men on the U.N. International Day of Culture, Diversity, Dialogue and Development (24.05.2021)
 
Interview by Radio Free Asia about the Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Brussels (20.05.2021)

 
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